Chaillot's Jewel
by Foxfire1
Summary: Wilhelmina Benedict and an informal court try to assist in rebuilding Chaillot. Sequel to "Dusk Dawning".
1. Chapter 1

(Author's Note: Number one, I thought I was _done_ with these people, but apparently not. One too many mental images came up and made me giggle, until I had to give up and start working them together into a story. Number two, many thanks to my beta-readers for helping me with ideas and polishing. Number three, the person referred to in the title is not Wilhelmina. Fair warning.)

Chapter One

In the Angelline formal gardens, Wilhelmina Benedict took a moment to savor the touch of the early-spring sun on her back. The air carried the smell of new-growing grass, and far away she could hear the boys playing some rough-and-tumble game. But all her attention was focused on the faint psychic scent at the very edge of her perception.

_Diccan. Our guest's back again._

Protective suspicion flashed over the link between them._ I'll be there to walk with you in a minute._

_You'll do no such thing. He has to trust us, and that won't happen with a Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord following me and glowering at everything in sight._

_I don't glower._

She waited.

_All right, I glower a little. Mostly when my Lady decides it's necessary to leave herself vulnerable near a strange male._

_He wears a Tiger's Eye at most. I'm not _vulnerable_. Besides, one whiff of hostility from us and we'll lose him; we've got to look harmless before we can find out what his trouble is._

The complex blend of frustration, resignation and respect that came back to her - and the memory of more than a few arguments on this very subject - were answer enough from Diccan. Since she was in no identifiable danger, he wouldn't interfere, but she couldn't expect him to take it tranquilly.

It had been several weeks since they'd first noticed the unfamiliar psychic scent; whoever it was did nothing but appear at intervals, watch them - watch her - for a bit, and flee. Diccan had gone on alert from the first, all his Warlord's instincts triggered by the nearness of an unknown male. Wilhelmina had been slower, but sensed nuances that neither Diccan nor Jhaliir were aware of; where they recognized only "strange male", Wilhelmina found considerably more. Young, light-Jeweled, and beleaguered, with fears that were too much for him to fight.

If nothing else, she understood the fear. Dorothea's rot hadn't completely settled into Chaillot, but the Territory still bore scars. Fear and distrust from both genders, a deep-seated wariness of the darker Jewels, and the children in Beldon Mor were paying the price. Those who hadn't lost one or both parents to Jaenelle's purge and the chaos afterward were often neglected by harried adults scrambling to rebuild. Wilhelmina offered shelter to as many as she could, but more slipped through the webs than she could find.

She felt Diccan's presence a moment before he came to join her - a familiar, warm thrum of power that matched and underlaid her own.

_Harmless_, she reminded him.

He gave her an I'll-be-the-judge-of-that smirk and hooked an arm possessively through hers as she turned toward the kitchen gardens. "Mairin wanted me to ask you if you were planning any large projects that might need the labor of two of the older boys."

She took his cue and spoke aloud for the more mundane - and very, very harmless - matters. "Well...there's ground to be broken for another plot of vegetables, furniture that needs shifting to the rooms we just opened up, and there's always something needing to be done in the kitchens - it's not as if we have a shortage of work for willing bodies."

Diccan grinned. "I was given to understand that willingness didn't much matter."

"Oh. One of _those_. Who was it and what did they do?"

"Berren and Tris. Apparently there was swordfighting with some kindling in the kitchen."

"Mm."

"Which eventually led to screaming and leaping out of the dumbwaiter."

"Oh, dear."

"Which spooked one of the little witches, who rounded up all the _littler _witches and barricaded them in the cellar for safety. Which was about when I came through the kitchen on a short cut to you. So Mairin threw the culprits on my good graces-"

"She could _find _some?" Wilhelmina murmured.

"-and I throw them on yours."

"I don't have any either."

"Exactly. I'm glad to see the boys growing...well, freer...but I won't have them scaring the little witches. Even by accident."

Wilhelmina nodded. So many needs to address, so many wounds of mind and heart that had to be bound while still tending the body's needs, but the youngest witches seemed to be the most vulnerable of all the children. "I'll come up with something suitably exhausting for the boys."

"Knew I could count on you, m'Lady."

She stuck her tongue out at him.

The vegetable garden was just beginning to show a faint green haze of seedlings - weeks earlier than any other garden in Chaillot. Wilhelmina's grandmother had shed her lifeblood on this land, and even three years later, things nurtured here grew healthy, grew strong. Even children. Wilhelmina couldn't heal all the wounds sustained during Dorothea's long, slow siege of Chaillot, but she could provide a safe place and an understanding ear. The rest was just...practicalities.

As dusk settled in over the gardens, though, she spared a thought for the suspicious young boy whose presence she kept sensing. Alone, afraid, and desperate to hide the fear lest it call down worse predators; she knew that feeling well.

_Try me, _she thought- stronger than a wish but much less than a psychic message. _I won't betray you. Try me._


	2. Chapter 2

She'd spent much of her girlhood training for eventual court service, and Wilhelmina knew her grandmother would have been distantly proud to find her in the Third Circle of a Territory Queen. Though she suspected most Fourth Circle witches reported to their Queens in drawing rooms or over cups of tea, and not in a horse barn. Even in a sunny one that smelled sweetly of hay, with only the faintest whiff of the other unavoidable horse smells.

"You're sure you don't want any help in the stables? I have a couple of young males who desperately need some manure to shovel."

"_My _stables, thank you." Elenor - Lady Elenor,Queen of Chaillot no matter how much she complained - leaned her pitchfork against the stable wall, patting the shoulder of the young mare who craned her neck over the stall door. "I've only just gotten my First Circle believing that I actually mean it when I tell them I need some time to work alone; boys are much more thickheaded, and I don't have time to get it through their heads as well." She frowned in thought. "But we're starting to rebuild some of the buildings that burned after the Purge, so I'll have a word with my Steward and see if he can help you find something suitably difficult."

"If not, I have an annoyed hearthwitch just waiting to explain matters to them." She suspected Mairin of working some obscure bit of hearth-Craft on the compost bin, just in case she could assign gardening duties to the two errant males who'd crashed through her kitchen. At least, when Jhaliir had gotten downwind of it, he'd flattened his ears, bolted toward the house, and not gone near the kitchen gardens for three days afterward. "I also needed to mention these three to you..." She handed the Queen a thin sheaf of papers; Elenor took it and scanned the letters of introduction Wilhelmina had written for her Steward.

"Two Warlords and a witch?"

Wilhelmina nodded. "She spends most of the time with her nose in the nearest book. I think she might train to be a Priestess, given some encouragement and the chance to see how Protocol works in practice and not on paper. And the males...are good boys, but they need someone to swat some sense into them, and Diccan's overworked as it is."

Elenor snorted, sounding more than a little like her own horses.

These informal meetings had been going on since shortly after Wilhelmina reclaimed her childhood home, when Elenor had negotiated an agreement to pasture some of her beloved horses on unused Angelline land. The Queen's heart was with her farm and her husband, but she was the only one the lesser Queens and Warlord Princes trusted enough to accept as ruler. The same sense of duty that made her acceptable as Queen kept her from abandoning her post for the life she preferred; if stabling a few horses made it easier for her, Wilhelmina would gladly help.

At least Elenor didn't want her to muck out stalls.

Wilhelmina set down the bucket of sweet feed she'd been carrying. "Those three are the last I'll need to find places for at the moment, but several of the adolescents I first took on are coming close to their Offerings. By Winsol I'm going to have a whole new set of problems nipping at my heels."

Elenor chuckled. "You make them sound like a pack of wolves."

"They're not that organized, thank the Darkness," Wilhelmina said. "But I've got witches who are mad for flirtation, and witches who are terrified of anything in trousers, and males who don't know what to trust, much less what to serve...and while I can give them a safe place to grow up, they have to _be _grown up sometime. And I can't keep sending them to your Court for training."

Elenor looked somber, but didn't disagree. Territory Queen or not, her resources were strained to the breaking point. "There are a few District Queens who I'm coming to trust. Next time I write them, I'll see if any of them can make places in a lower Circle. If not - we'll think of something. The males especially need the experience of serving somewhere..." She searched for diplomatic words for a moment, before giving up and saying "_decent_. In the meantime, how will it work if I send my Master of the Guard to conduct some training exercises in the old gardens?"

Exercises that Diccan, as the dominant male here, would be assisting in...and giving the fractious young males a chance to appreciate his uniquely dirty style of combat. The two witches shared a slow grin of mutual understanding.

"I'll see to it, then, and contact you when things are ready," Elenor said briskly. "In the meantime, I'll see you in ten days or so."

Wilhelmina nodded. "Just don't make me shovel up after your horses."

"Of course not. As long as you don't find more traumatized adolescents needing a contract between now and then."

She came back to the manor to find Jhaliir stretched on the front lawn, lying beside a very, very badly dug flowerbed where no flowerbed had ever been intended to be.

_The little she-cubs wanted to dig a den. I helped,_ he explained, displaying massive forepaws now stained a deep earth-brown._ Human witches do not know how to dig a good den._

Well, that explained the...shape. Five hundred pounds of cat digging straight down, plus a gaggle of girl-children digging to the sides, _might _produce something that looked like a tornado gone horribly wrong, or one of Mairin's more ambitious experiments before it started going right. "I don't think they wanted a den-" though you couldn't ever be quite sure- "Just a place to plant flowers."

_Flowers are pretty. Dens are safe. I should show them how to dig good dens._

"Pretty is more important than you might think." She wound her fingers into his ruff and scratched idly. "If there's time to make things pretty, it means you're in a safe place already."

_Mostly safe. I will protect the little she-cubs from the strange male until you and Diccan catch him._

"He's strange, but I doubt he's a threat. And if you chase him away before I can talk to him, I'll-" She broke off with a sudden frown, following the idea that had first manifested as idle speculation about Jhaliir and hunting. "Hm. Bait," she said thoughtfully, patted Jhaliir, and went to find Mairin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

It took the better part of ten days for Wilhelmina to catch so much as a glimpse of the young male, and longer than that before she actually spoke to him. Days of irregularly scheduled trips to the alley where they left their few discards for the ragpickers to take and sell, leaving generous amounts of food carefully altered to look like refuse. The young male would have taken anything more straightforward as a trap and fled, and Wilhelmina wasn't willing to risk his disappearance.

"If you went once a day, you'd have an easier time feeding him," Mairin said, as Wilhelmina stole a few minutes to linger in the kitchen and chat. The hearthwitch eyed that day's offering critically; she'd thrown herself wholeheartedly into the game when Wilhelmina explained what she needed, and had been gleefully finding ways to bake loaves with a burnt-looking crust hiding hearty bread, and using Craft to "bruise" fruit without leaving anything other than surface discoloration. Privately, Wilhelmina wondered just how long it would be before she found a way to sneak cookies into the mix.

"If I went once a day, he could just come snatch it in the dead of night. This way, he has to watch us to figure out what we're doing next." And if he was watching, he might actually come to believe they posed no threat to him.

Mairin snorted. "Glad _I'm_ not supposed to be the sneaky one around here."

"I am not sneaky!"

"Not exactly, no. But you think in corkscrews sometimes."

Corkscrews or not, when Wilhelmina caught a sudden note of cautious resolve in the young male's psychic scent, she smiled to herself, waited for evening, and dressed as carefully as she would have for any other important meeting. Then she cadged several fresh loaves from Mairin, tucked them into a basket, and set out for the ragpickers' alley.

Or tried to. When he saw her leaving alone, Jhaliir sat down in front of her and rumbled at her. She snarled at him; he blinked, settled down more comfortably and coiled his tail around his forefeet. _Strange male. You are not going alone._

"Mother Night. I wear the Sapphire, and I can hardly feel his Jewel at all. I'll be fine."

_Not alone,_ he repeated, and somehow looked even more immovable. She wondered if he was using Craft to make himself heavier. An appeal to Diccan produced nothing but a mute, maddening smirk, and Wilhelmina sighed. When both her males got this stubborn, it wasn't worth arguing about.

So she only fumed a little as she walked down to the alley, accompanied by an unreasonably stubborn tiger. When she got there, she set the fragrant, neatly covered basket in the center of the alley - as much a dare in its way as a duelist's challenge - and waited.

Jhaliir grumbled about her search for another cub to take care of. _Need more adults, to tend to so many cubs._

"There _aren't _any more adults." Not with the whole territory reeling from years of Hayll's subtle assaults. Those who could spare any attention from their own scars were few, and most of them already served in Elinor's court. "If we hold things together for a few more years, some of the males and witches may be able to form strong Courts. But right now we're just scrambling and hoping for a few days between emergencies."

Jhaliier sent her an image of drought-stricken land, the streams at a trickle and the game thin and scanty. She sighed and twined her fingers in his ruff. "Pretty much."

"Um. It's not enough."

The voice was a light tenor with a touch of harshness - to cover up a quaver, Wilhelmina suspected. Whatever she'd expected, this wasn't it. She schooled her face and her psychic scent to calm, leaving the outermost of her barriers down. "Well. There's three loaves of bread and a handful of apples in there, and I suspect my friend slipped in some leftover nutcakes as well. Should I start packing extra baskets?"

He scowled and backed away - a thin, half-grown boy with a shock of dusty-black hair and amber eyes that hinted at Hayllian ancestry. She'd expected the White Jewel - in an old, tarnished setting, but proudly displayed on a braided cord around his neck - but not the caste. A young Warlord Prince, all ferocity and predatory focus, and precariously balanced between fear and anger.

But not at her. She could reach him, if she could find a way past the suspicion. "We've fed you, we might be able to feed a few more." She flicked her eyes over him, and let him see it. "_You're_ not eating what we leave-"

"I eat some!"

_And do what with the rest?_ she wondered but didn't ask. Triggering the protective part of a Warlord Prince's nature would destroy any chance she had of connecting with the boy.

He eyed her suspiciously. Took a step closer and settled himself, arms crossed, at a safe distance. "I had to try some first, to make sure it was safe."

She raised one eyebrow, broke off a piece of bread, and ate it.

He huffed impatiently. "I know it's safe now. But it's not enough for - it's not enough." Protective hostility flared in his psychic scent, and Wilhelmina began weaving psychic tendrils of calm through the air.

"We don't have much to spare," she said evenly. "But if you're hungry, come to the back door - I _know _you know where it is," she added with a touch of tartness. He didn't smile, but the wariness ebbed just a bit, and he met her eyes for a moment. "My name's Wilhelmina. Ask for me or for Mairin, and we'll find a way to help."

Not that she believed for an instance that food was at the root of the young male's problems...

He made a noncommittal noise.

She said nothing more for a moment, unwilling to tip that balance further in one direction or another. Instead, she used Craft to float the basket within easy reach and gave the boy a shallow bow - scrupulously correct Protocol from a senior witch to a less powerful but high-caste male. He couldn't possibly be educated enough to recognize the nuance, but some part of him would know she took him seriously. "Try us," she said simply, beckoned to Jhaliir, and turned to leave.

She was almost to the corner before she heard an uneasy shuffle where she'd left the boy. "M'name's Shad."

And he was gone.

* * *

"Sit there. Eat that." Diccan met her in the sitting room of the small suite they shared, pointing her to the couch and handing her a small, covered tray.

She took it, but not meekly. "I'm _fine_."

"You missed supper, and Mairin will thwack me if I don't make sure you eat. Worse, she'll stop making those things with the sausage and the eggs and the fluffy dough and no one will want to wake up for breakfast any more." He plopped down comfortably beside her and helped himself to a roll. "Any luck? I thought surely you'd have our young stray bathed, fed and tucked into bed by now."

"It's not going to be that simple. This is more like...like taming a barn cat. It'll be some time before he does anything more than hiss and run away, I think."

"So we have a houseful of young males and witches with any number of problems, and you're running yourself ragged to take on _another _boy with _more _problems?"

"Well, yes." She swiped at him with her fork as he eyed the second roll.

"I see." Diccan nodded sagely, but the corners of his mouth quirked upward almost unnoticeably. "Is this one of those things that will make sense after you explain it, or one of those things that will never make any sense whatsoever because you're a witch and I'm a male?"

She pondered. "A little of both."

He gave an irritated rumble that would have done credit to Jhaliir.

"It's...complicated." She spoke slowly, trying to reason it out as she went. "Dorothea tried to kill every Queen and Warlord Prince she couldn't corrupt, and then the witchstorm killed the ones she _did _corrupt. Jaenelle didn't think about what she was doing - maybe she _couldn't_, not and do what needed doing. But now...there's a few young males and witches who can eventually form strong courts, but there's hardly a single Warlord Prince or Queen among them. Sometimes I wonder if this Realm won't just fall apart in the next few decades, no matter what we do."

"So a lone Warlord Prince could be a danger to Chaillot if he were allowed to grow up - well, feral. I see what you mean."He made a thoughtful noise and shifted deeper into the sofa, brushing a suspicious drift of tawny hair off the cushion next to him. The sofa, while still comfortable, had seen better days. Most of them before Jhaliir decided it had clearly been intended as a tiger bed. "I don't know if this stray of yours-"

"He said he's called Shad."

"-if Shad's any likelier to trust a male than a witch, but I'll keep a watch out for him and try to look friendly. Meanwhile, it's late, I think the various youngsters have run out of mischief for the day-"

"Don't say that. The last time you said that, the little witches figured out how to float their pillows with Craft and had sledding contests down the back stairs."

"Yes, and _you _helped."

"I only slid down once or twice."

"And helped them clean up the feathers before Mairin woke up the next morning."

"That's not mischief, that's charity."

He tipped his head in acknowledgement. "You have a point. Either way, we'd best get our own rest and hope no one discovers a new and exciting use for Craft - or the kitchen, come to think of it, or the gardening supplies or the library - before morning." He held out his arm; she took it with a not-too-weary smile.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

"Mother Night." Hands on hips, Wilhelmina examined the...contraption, was the only word for it...in the middle of the tool shed. "You _had_ to mention the garden supplies, didn't you?"

"I didn't think they'd take it as a challenge." Diccan studied the two young males and their contraption with a carefully blank expression, but Wilhelmina could feel the undercurrent of laughter bubbling through his mind.

They'd been woken shortly after sunrise by the gleeful shouts of young children, who'd found that turning the crank on the - the contraption - forcefully enough would lift them into the air. She and Diccan had arrived just before Berran and Tris, the two young Warlords she'd left to Mairin's dubious mercy and who'd apparently responded by creating...this. Whatever it was.

It had started life as a barrel, but now rested on its side on four rickety legs - well, three legs and a rake, attached to the frame with twine, Craft and possibly a bit of prayer. The frame was rather clever, actually, allowing the barrel to roll when you turned the crank; she just didn't know what had possessed the two boys to build it.

"What possessed you to _build_ this?"

"We were trying to help Lady Mairin-"

"-and get out of turning the compost pile-" Berran muttered mutinously. Tris kicked him in the shin without looking.

"Trying to help her with the compost, m'Lady," Tris compromised. "When you start paying attention, it's obvious there's a lot that needs doing, and we thought maybe we could build something that would do the same job with not as many hands needed to do it. See, if you turn the handle-"

He demonstrated, not without a nervous moment or two when the contraption teetered dangerously. "-you can do pretty quickly what took me and Berran a couple of hours yesterday."

He went on at some length, talking faster as self-consciousness faded. Wilhelmina concentrated on keeping a straight face as the tang of laughter in Diccan's psychic scent grew stronger, but eventually Tris ran down, and Berran tugged him away, claiming lessons and probably just looking for escape. Wilhelmina muffled her giggles in Diccan's shoulder.

"You realize they're likely going to sneak out of whatever lessons they _do_ have to look for more parts? The Darkness only knows what they're going to do to that thing later."

"I'm trying not to think about it."

He nodded sagely. "Probably best. I'm sure they won't do anything too disastrous for - oh, another day or so at least."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and Mairin will handle the next...contraption."

"Really? And what did those poor boys do to you, that you'd wish Mairin's temper on them when she finds all the tools out of place?"

Wisely, she kept silent on that question. "Maybe we should look into finding a carpenter to apprentice them to, after they make the Offering. We've been working so hard on teaching them law and Protocol that we haven't given much thought to what comes after."

He tucked an arm around her waist as they started out of the garden shed. "You can't solve everyone's problems at once, m'Lady. Fitting them for Court gives them a good start, regardless of whether or not they end up in service somewhere."

"Mm. There are more courts than just the ones Queens form, though." She'd seen it at the Keep, subtly interlocking circles of power focused on one witch or another. Jaenelle might have been at the center, but there were smaller, subtler webs of service throughout the Dark Court. Surreal and her wolf, Marian and her family, Mrs. Beale and - well, everybody. "They don't have to be in a formal Court to be happy."

He chuckled. "Considering which, has it occurred to you that some of these boyos might grow up and decide _you're_ the witch they'd rather be in service to?"

"...oh, Mother _Night_."

* * *

By the time she'd dissuaded an appallingly young (and appallingly determined) little Warlord from pulling Jhaliir's ears, arbitrated a squabble over toss-ball, and coaxed an eight-year-old Black Widow out of the garden, Wilhelmina had forgotten completely about the morning's conversation with Diccan. By the time she'd helped Mairin squeeze meals for the next ten days out of a seven-day budget, chased a handful of giggling little witches out of the stables, and nodded appreciatively over the frog a five-year-old Prince insisted on showing her, she'd forgotten about pretty much everything except supper and bed. But when she caught a whiff of Shad's psychic scent - clearer now that he wasn't trying to hide from her - she dropped what she was doing and went to find him, gingerly scooping up the frog to restore it to the garden on her way by. It was a long walk from the garden to the alley that bordered the side of her lands, and she needed every bit of it to stop looking harried and start looking trustworthy.

"Why are you doing this?" Shad eyed her suspiciously over the latest basket. He'd started coming to meet her more-or-less reliably, as long as he was at a safe distance from the borders of the Angelline estate. It wasn't trust, but she no longer worried that he'd panic and bolt.

_Because I can't stand watching a Warlord Prince eat his heart out with fear. _"Because we've got a bit to spare, and you could use it."

He pinned her with a narrow-eyed look. It might even have worked, if he'd been considerably older and past his Offering. As it was, she gave him a bland, polite stare until he stopped trying to intimidate her. "I meant what I said. We're short on room for sleeping-" he snorted, and she raised a quelling eyebrow at him- "but Mairin and I can usually gather the makings for a spare meal or two."

"Mairin? Is she the red-headed witch who comes with you sometimes?"

She nodded. Mairin had come along a few times before Shad first showed himself, trying to make sure the "bait" was arranged to her satisfaction.

Shad grinned abruptly, a flash that lit his thin face for an instant. "She yelled at me when I was trying to figure you out. I was, um, out of sight and she marched to the middle of the alley with her basket and said you were both working too hard to put up with this and I had no call to make it harder just because I was feeling stubborn."

"Oh, she did?" Wilhelmina tried unsuccessfully to muffle a laugh.

"And then she stomped back to your - your-"

"House."

"That's not just a house. Too big, and too many people, and you're trying to do something. Houses are just for sleeping or hiding."

"School, then. At least, we try to be."

"Hm." He pondered that. "'S good enough. The important thing is that the littles who go in there don't disappear like some."

Wilhelmina went very, very still. "People have been disappearing?"

"Some always do, here and there. Looking for better pickings somewhere else, girls going to Red Moon houses so they can get meals and a roof over their heads..." He trailed off with a shrug. "Sometimes it's just what happens, sometimes it's bad. I was afraid you were like that hospital with all the uncles. 'S why I was trying to look you over without you noticing."

A knot of cold clenched in her belly. "Briarwood was destroyed before you were born."

"So? Kids still tell stories. Some of them even tell the truth. And I have to look out for - for people I worry about." He inclined his head in a not-quite-bow. "I don't know what you are, but you're not like Briarwood. Lady."

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

Author's Note: I live! More or less. This is a short chapter, but the plot is starting to show up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to trying to beat my outline into submission...


End file.
